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Einstein's Biggest Blunder That Wasn't
jose parinas writes "The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a "cosmological constant" to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research.
The enigmatic "dark energy" that drives the acceleration of the Universe behaves just like Einstein's famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). Their observations reveal that the dark energy behaves like Einstein's cosmological constant to a precision of 10%."
Will Einstein's genius never cease to amaze us post-humously? Probably not.
This will be a great thing for students to look up if they are doing (or going to do) relativity in school.
IIRC, Einstein "fudged" his equations (i.e., introduced the cosmological constant) to stop them from predicting that the universe would expand. Subsequently, Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding after all. Still later, it was found that the rate of expansion was not in line with Einstein's un-fudged equations. Since then, the value of the cosmological constant has really depended on what value you measure for the expansion of the universe.
So, why is this news?
10% isnt a precision, it's a disaster. You cant possibly claim a constant is valid if the empirical evidence varies from it by 10%
As the poster of the grammar nazi comment, I assert that the original poster did indeed make an informative post, which is almost certainly NOT indicative of a low I.Q. (if I suspected that, I would not have bothered with a reply). I also chose not to reply as an AC, earlier, figuring that I deserved moderation punishment for (admitted) rudeness, or at least the chance for the original poster and others to make me a foe, if need be.
Indeed, and science is not like mathematics either. Newton and company were very wrong about this. With math 2+2!=5 (even for extremely large 2 :P), but in science all you have is theories drawn from lots of anecdotal evidence. If the evidence contradics the theory, then the theory is obviously wrong (or the evidence is not what we think it is).
For this reason science and religion are not at odds because they server very difference purposes. Sure, they have some effect on each other, but I can believe that Darwin was a genius and still appreciate the significance of the Genesis creation story.
How would you know that space-time was denser? When you move your ruler inside of it, wouldn't the ruler's size fit the density of space, showing in the case of the basketball that can fit a house that it actually is the size of a house, since it can fit a house's worth of rulers inside? Since space is just a measure of distance and distance is a measure of chemical bonds strengths over space and whatnot, it seems like it would be hard to measure space to be any more or less than 1/1.
If it's such a common mistake, then maybe it is a *good* thing to point it out in an attempt to educate the masses, wouldn't you think so? There was nothing humiliating in the way the grammar-nazi pointed it out. If one feels humiliated simply because somebody pointed out an error, then that person has issues.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
The crazy thing is, evolution doesn't have to challenge anybody's worldview either; it's only an incomplete understanding of it that leads most of those who do into thinking that it somehow contradicts or affirms their religious opinions. The questions of the existence of God and the origin of life, the universe and everything are orthogonal to those answered by various theories of evolution. It's not the case that "evolution says where we come from, so now we don't need God," and it's not the case that science and religion are incompatible. This whole fight is just a waste of time.
"and Einstein's one-man theory is truly impressive."
Its impressive, but far from being a one-man theory. It was also supported by experiment, namely the famous Michelson-Morley experiment that ruled out a preferred "ether" frame for the propagation of light.Special relativity also drew from works by poincare, lorentz, hilbert, and others. Einstein's greatness was both in bringing everything into one coherent picture, and in having the courage to do so when almost none of his colleagues at that time believed a word of it.
how about detecting it without measuring it directly, like when we watch light from far away in the universe bend around various cosmic objects.
also, is that guy describing ether? sounds like ether to me.